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Special issue on publishing reform?
I’ve just been invited to edit a special issue in the MDPI journal ‘publications‘ on a topic I can specify. If I do it, I thought it should revolve around replacing journal rank (i.e., altmetrics, ALM,...
View ArticleScience Magazine rejects data, publishes anecdote
Yesterday, Science Magazine published a news story (not a peer-reviewed paper) by Gonzo-Scientist John Bohannon on a sting operation in which a journalist submitted a bogus manuscript to 304 open...
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How scientific are scientists, really?
In what area of scholarship are repeated replications of always the same experiment every time published and then received with surprise, only to immediately be completely ignored until the next study?...
View ArticleHow important is the Impact Factor?
I recently was sent a report from a university-wide working group on the publishing habits within the Freie Universität Berlin. I don’t think this document is available online, but I think I’m not...
View ArticleAre more retractions due to more scrutiny?
In the last “Science Weekly” podcast from the Guardian, the topic was retractions. At about 20:29 into the episode, Hannah Devlin asked, whether the reason ‘top’ journals retract more articles may be...
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Just how widespread are impact factor negotiations?
Over the last decade or two, there have been multiple accounts of how publishers have negotiated the impact factors of their journals with the “Institute for Scientific Information” (ISI), both before...
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Even without retractions, ‘top’ journals publish the least reliable science
tl;dr: Data from thousands of non-retracted articles indicate that experiments published in higher-ranking journals are less reliable than those reported in ‘lesser’ journals. Vox health reporter Julia...
View ArticlePrestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability
In which journal a scientist publishes is considered one of the most crucial factors determining their career. The underlying common assumption is that only the best scientists manage to publish in a...
View ArticleReliable novelty: New should not trump true
Although a case can be made for rewarding scientists for risky, novel science rather than for incremental, reliable science, novelty without reliability ceases to be science. The currently available...
View ArticleGerman funder DFG: Why the sudden inconsistency?
The DFG is a very progressive and modern funding agency. More than two years ago, the main German science funding agency signed the “Declaration on Research Assessment” DORA. The first point of this...
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